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PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
From this it was applied to other species of the same family. 
It is certainly “a curious accident,” as Dr. Prior observes, 
“ that a word that originally meant 4 fiftieth’ should come to be 
successively the name of a festival of the Church, of a flower, 
of an ornament in muslin called pinking, of a colour, and of a 
sword-stab.” Shakespeare uses the word in three of its senses. 
First, as applied to a colour—• 
Come, thou monarch of the Vine, 
Plumpy Bacchus with Pink eyne. 
Antony and Cleopatra , ii. 7. 1 
Second, as applied to an ornament of dress in Romeo’s person— 
Then is my pump well flowered ; 
Romeo and Juliet , ii. 4. 
i. e. well pinked. And in Grumio’s excuses to Petruchio for 
the non-attendance of the servants— 
Nathaniel’s coat, Sir, was not fully made, 
And Gabriel’s pumps were all unpinked 
I’ the heel.— Taming of the Shrew, iv. 1. 
And thirdly, as the pinked ornament in muslin— 
There’s a haberdasher’s wife of small wit near him, that railed upon me 
till her Pink’d porringer fell off her head.— Henry VIII , v. 3. 
And as applied to the flower in the passage quoted above. Lie 
also uses it in another sense— 
This Pink is one of Cupid’s carriers ; 
Clap on more sail—pursue ! 
Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. 7 * 
where pink means a small country vessel often mentioned 
under that name by writers of the sixteenth century. 
1 It is very probable that this does not refer to the colour—“ Pink = 
winking, half-shut.”—S chmidt. And see Nares, s.v. Pink eyne. 
